A cautionary tale - being a long time VZW customer in good standing gets you nowhere

Question

Here is a cautionary tale about how being a long time VZW customer in good standing counts for nothing.
My wife and I have been VZW customers for many years.  We each have upgraded phones at least two times over our initial models.  Several years ago, we added a third phone to our account: nothing fancy, just a crappy Coupe flip phone.  At the time, this third phone was a $10 add-on in the family plan, and was handed to my mother in law to use.    After my mother in law passed away, my father in law kept the phone, and we kept up the payments for it.  His health failed, and when he passed away, the phone moved to my brother in law, and we again kept up the payments on the phone ourselves. 
Now in the meantime, back in 2011, my wife wanted to upgrade her phone.  Either because her prior phone wasn't up for an upgrade or due to us just not paying attention, we somehow apparently "transferred" the upgrade that available for our in-laws' definitely-not-smart flip phone to my wife's phone.  Now, since it was the upgrade of the $10 per-month flip phone we used to upgrade the Droid, it was the contract of the $10-per-month flip phone that got renewed into another 2-year cycle - not the Droid.
Also in the meantime, I upgraded my Samsung Rogue to a Galaxy S3.  At the same time, I modified our plan to the Share Everything plan.  Because of the nature of this plan, the 3rd phone, the crappy Coupe flip phone, that used to be $10 per month increased to $30 per month.  When I signed my own new contract, I specifically asked at the VZW store whether it would be simple to drop the Coupe from the plan, because I was not sure how much longer our brother in law would need it.  They said sure, it would not be a problem.  Drop it whenever you need to, and your bill will go down $30 per month!
Now we come to the end of 2012 when my brother in law does not need this phone anymore, and in fact returned it to us.  It is sitting here collecting dust.  I called VZW today to remove it from our account.  Can you see where this is going?  Because we triggered the new contract for this phone by upgrading my wife's OTHER phone back in 2011, the Coupe is still under contract.  So our choice is apparently keep paying $30 per month until June for a phone that used to only cost $10 per month and that no one is using, or pay a $150 termination fee. 
I understand how this works contractually.  But the big picture is that we have been good customers for many years, have been paying for 3 phones on our account for several of those years, and one of those phones is no longer being used (the usage is literally 0).  But can we drop that phone from our contract now that we have been paying on it for multiple years?  Nooooo.  I was misled by VZW agents when I upgraded our plan to one that increased the cost of this phone from $10 per month to $30 per month that removing it would not be a problem.   A cheap flip-phone phone, which is probably physically worth $5 in hardware, if that, and which itself has never been upgraded since it was purchased several years ago, cannot be removed from our account. When it's all said and done we will end up paying vastly more than the phone and its usage is actually worth because VZW "got us" with the contract shenanigans. Congratulations, Verizon Wireless, well played.  
Ironically, the Droid - which gets lots of usage - is beyond its upgrade date and is no longer under contract.  So I guess we could drop that phone with no problem.  But we don't want to, we want to drop the cheap phone that no one uses.  And we can't.  As I said to the agent on the phone today who was not interested in helping a long time customer solve a problem, this is exactly why people hate cell phone companies.

Answer 1

I'm not *too* worried about VZW's feelings since they in effect have changed up the original contract when they forced my monthly fee for the phone to go from $10 per month to $30 per month because I upgraded a totally different phone that required a whole new calling plan, as the older plan had conveniently been phased out.  (Interesting how action on one phone has an effect on totally different phones that are on a totally different contract.)  Anyway, this isn't us trying to bilk VZW out of legitimate income.  It's trying to do what makes sense.
Perhaps I muddied the water with all the history of the third phone.  The distilled version is this: We have 3 phones on our account, two smart phones and one ancient flip phone.  Only two of the three are still under contract, so there is one we are free to drop at any time.  And we would indeed like to drop one phone from the account.  It would be in VZWs best interest to have the phone we drop be the one they make the least amount of money from.  That would be the flip phone.  It is in our best interest to drop the phone that is no longer in use.  That is the flip phone.  Seems like a win-win situation to me!
But because of the the way contracts are structured,  if we are to drop a phone, it needs to be the Droid, because that's the one now beyond the contract period.  So we would drop the phone that VZW makes more money from, and that we still use.  This is in the best interest of neither of us. 
Yes, I'm trying to terminate early the contract we have on the flip phone.  But on the other hand, we are willing to continue making monthly payments on a more expensive phone that is NOT under contract anymore.  It seems like there's an easy fix: let us drop the flip phone, and heck, go ahead and put the Droid back onto contract for what would have been the duration of the flip phone contract. The inflexibility and inability to do something like this is what's irritating.
Contracts are great until there is a reason for both parties to make a change that is beneficial to everyone involved.  I think that's what we have here.  Contracts can be updated.  Ask any professional athlete